ANARCHY IN PORTLAND, POLICE ORDERED TO STAND DOWN
Anarchy Breaks Out in Portland, With the Mayor’s Blessing
A vicious mob targeted the ICE office and even a food cart. The police followed orders to do nothing. By Andy Ngo, 8/3/18,
(Wall Street Journal) Along the
trolley tracks behind the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field
office, a biohazard cleanup crew works under police protection. It finds used needles
and buckets of human waste simmering in nearly 100-degree heat. The smell of
urine and feces fills the block. For more than five weeks, as many as 200
people had occupied the site to demand ICE’s immediate abolition. They’re gone
now, but a community is left reeling. Thirty-eight days of
government-sanctioned anarchy will do that.
A mob surrounded ICE’s
office in Southwest Portland June 19. They barricaded the exits and blocked the
driveway. They sent “guards” to patrol the doors, trapping workers inside. At
night they laid on the street, stopping traffic at a critical junction near a
hospital. Police stayed away. “At this time I am denying your request for
additional resources,” the Portland Police Bureau’s deputy chief, Robert Day,
wrote to federal officers pleading for help. Hours later, the remaining ICE
workers were finally evacuated by a small federal police team. The facility
shut down for more than a week.
Portland, Oregon: Along the trolley tracks behind the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement field office, a biohazard cleanup crew works under police protection. It finds used needles
and buckets of human waste simmering in nearly 100-degree heat. The smell of
urine and feces fills the block. For more than five weeks, as many as 200
people had occupied the site to demand ICE’s immediate abolition.
They’re gone
now, but a community is left reeling. Thirty-eight days of government-sanctioned
anarchy will do that.
A mob surrounded ICE’s
office in Southwest Portland June 19. They barricaded the exits and blocked the
driveway.
They sent “guards” to
patrol the doors, trapping workers inside. At night they laid on the street,
stopping traffic at a critical junction near a hospital. Police stayed away.
“At this time I am denying your request for additional resources,” the Portland
Police Bureau’s deputy chief, Robert Day, wrote to federal officers pleading
for help. Hours later, the remaining ICE workers were finally evacuated by a
small federal police team. The facility shut down for more than a week.
Signs called ICE employees
“Nazis” and “white supremacists.” Others accused them of running a
“concentration camp,” and demanded open borders and prosecution of ICE agents.
Along a wall, vandals wrote the names of ICE staff, encouraging others to
publish their private information online.
Federal workers were
defenseless. An ICE officer, who asked that his name not be published, told me
one of his colleagues was trailed in a car and confronted when he went to pick
up his daughter from summer camp. Later people showed up at his house. Another
had his name and photo plastered on flyers outside his home accusing him of
being part of the “Gestapo.”
Where were the police?
Ordered away by Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler, who doubles as police
commissioner. “I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be engaged or sucked into a
conflict, particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong
track,” he tweeted. “If [ICE is] looking for a bailout from this mayor, they
are looking in the wrong place.”
The mob set up camp behind
the building, where they harassed journalists and banned photography. The
open-borders advocates also erected an 8-foot wall around their site. I walked
through and saw young children, including infants, in squalid conditions and
90-degree heat. Every American flag was defaced. Anarchist and communist flags
were unsoiled.
Stuart Lindquist, the ICE
facility’s 79-year-old landlord, visited his property on June 21. “The
political powers in the city of Portland have stopped the police from doing
what they normally would do,” he told me. When he attempted to drive into the
parking lot, occupiers swarmed and pounded his windows. In the commotion, Mr. Lindquist’s car
struck someone in the mob, who wasn’t injured. His home address later appeared
online, and he says the harassment hasn’t stopped.
On June 28 federal police
mobilized from out of state finally moved to reopen the office. They arrested a
handful of people for refusing to leave the ICE office’s front, but the rest
retreated to the camp and focused their vitriol on the officers. They
repeatedly called a black officer “traitor” and “house n—.” They shouted that
they knew where the officers lived, and published more addresses online.
The same day Mayor Wheeler
again pledged not to intervene. In a statement, he whitewashed the lawless
behavior: “I join those outraged by ICE actions
separating parents from their children, and support peaceful protest to give
voice to our collective moral conscience.”
The Hakes family, which
owns the Happy Camper food cart across the street from ICE’s office, responded
to the statement with incredulity. The mob “terrorized our family” and forced
the business to close, Julie Hakes told me. Ms. Hakes showed me text messages
from her 21-year-old daughter, Brianna, who ran the cart. “Just saw a drug
deal,” Brianna reported early on. After members of the anti-ICE mob spotted her
selling breakfast burritos to federal officers, the situation deteriorated.
“Call me immediately!” Brianna wrote after being accused of “supporting the
pigs” and “child deportation.” She said people wearing masks threatened to hurt
her and burn down the cart, and the police never responded to their
frantic calls.
Randy Glary, a 52-year-old
artist and longtime resident, was photographing the camp when he said a group
of occupiers knocked his camera into his face. Charles Williams, a 62-year-old
man who lives across the street, said someone threatened to stab him with an
“AIDS-infected needle.” From his balcony, he saw the “thugs” begin masked
street patrols. Others brandished sticks. Lisa Leonard, a 53-year-old disabled
resident, said occupiers hit her on her head, disabled her electric wheelchair,
and lifted her in the air when she complained about loud drumming. She called
police, who took a statement but made no arrests.
The locals who spoke to me
all wondered why the city allowed this and ignored their calls for
intervention. Peter Simpson, a public-information officer with the Portland
Police Bureau, explained that “at the mayor’s direction, PPB involvement was
very limited” until July 25.
Back at the trolley
tracks, the occupiers have been evicted but taxpayers will have to foot the
costly cleanup bill. The Hakes family is still trying to recover. Brianna has
decided to move out of the neighborhood. “They know my face and car,” she said.
Like other residents I spoke to, she expects the mob to return.
Mr. Ngo is an editor at
Quillette.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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